Today, I’m taking a page out of my own blog’s book, and answering a WU mailbag question. Here it is:
My novel may require some research, just to make sure the situations I’m putting my characters into are even plausible. For example: Marta has an ulcer. She poor. The free clinic she went to would have given her free antibiotics, but there was a shortage of prescription drugs. So she sends her son to the pharmacy and he discovers there’s also shortage of the drug the doctor prescribed. Since the story starts out in Guadalajara, Mexico, I had to call my friends there to see if there were any free clinics in Mexico. So, the question: How much can you make up in fiction? I mean, after all, isn’t it make believe. (I’m referring to novels written in a more realist way — not science fiction, I know they have to create entire worlds.)
This is a great question, and one that I have some experience with, especially since in my first book, my character wrestled with very specific medical situations that I thought were critical to get right. My rule of thumb – and the reason I’m responding to the question is that I bet other writers have different rules of thumb, so I’m curious to hear them – is that if something is a fact in real life, then you should make it fact in your book. If there aren’t free clinics in Mexico, don’t include them in your book because someone, somewhere, will know that you screwed up an easily checkable fact, and this will discredit a lot of the rest of your writing. Don’t claim that the sun rises in the east. That’s not fiction. Don’t cite medical treatments that, with a little research, would prove faulty and look amateurish. That’s not fiction either. Don’t screw up geography that most readers can easily draw upon – you will never hear the end of it in your inbox. In Time of My Life, I mentioned that my character googled something in the year 2001. Google was up and running back then, but that hasn’t stopped readers from occasionally emailing me to let me know that they thought that it wasn’t.
Where can you take liberties? With a lot of other things. In Time of My Life, I invented a lot of restaurants and bars and various places that had nothing to do with actual fact, and in The One That I Want, I invent my heroine’s hometown entirely. Readers accept that this happens in fiction and don’t hold it against you. In fact, with The One That I Want, I almost felt that it was CRITICAL to invent an entire town in my mind, as if building my character – and her hometown that she is so tied to – from scratch. That said, I was conscious of making her situation within that town realistic: that she was at a position in her job that was realistic for her education level, that references to bordering states and/or cities were accurate, that specifics of pregnancy (or attempts for pregnancy) were also by-the-book. Because, again, if a reader is flying through the pages and all of the sudden thinks, “Huh? I know that in real life, she can’t be pregnant because of XYZ,” you lose them.
Ultimately, you’re creating fiction, but you’re asking readers to take it seriously, to dive into a new world with the idea that in some way, it’s believable. So my advice is to stick to the fact when indeed there are facts to stick to. Take liberties with the imaginary aspects of your writing – and that can be most of it – but when it comes to the nitty-gritty, get it right.
Picture courtesy Flickr’s Xymena
About Allison Winn Scotch
Allison Winn Scotch is the bestselling author of six novels, including IN TWENTY YEARS, THE THEORY OF OPPOSITES, and TIME OF MY LIFE. Her seventh novel, BETWEEN ME AND YOU, will be released on January 9th, 2018. In addition to fiction, she pens celebrity profiles for a variety of magazines, which justifies her pop culture obsession and occasionally lends to awesome Facebook status updates. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. For more about her and her books, go to allisonwinn.com or follow her on Twitter at @aswinn.
I completely agree. Even though you’re making up an entire world when you write fiction, you have to make readers believe it could all be true.
I’ve been doing a lot of research for my book lately, and I wonder what people who saw my online search history would think I’m up to. Divorce, miscarriage, child custody battles, it’s all there, but I need to get my facts straight. I may even do some interviews with experts later on if I can’t get the right information online.
Great question and answer.
Also, GREAT new look for WU! I dunno if it will skew too “girly” for some of the male readers, but I really like it. And the blog name/tagline stand out a lot better!
.-= Kristan´s last blog ..“You were supposed to do years of this. I could barely handle it for two hours.” =-.
This is a great post! It’s also reassuring because I take the same approach to my writing. My current wip takes place in my hometown so when I was there last month I took a drive around to make sure I had things placed in the correct location.
.-= Melanie´s last blog ..No Reply =-.
I have a tendency to interview experts and then fudge a little on the truth. For example, my current book involves a school of veterinary medicine. In real life, students either do large animal OR small animal work, but not both, and certainly never in the same day. To limit the protagonist like this made for less interesting reading so I consciously made a decision to break the rules so that she could be involved in the most interesting situations.
Thank you for this! I was working with an editor (who I am no longer working with) who told me everything had to be fact. So I spent months and months researching restaurants and bars and checking out menus and trying to decribe eateries I’ve never been to in order to do this.
But I always thought it would be much easier and a lot more relevant to just make things up so I can create them, rather than trying to describe a restaurant I’ve never been to and end up finding a reader who has been there and having her say to me, “Um, no, that’s NOT what it looks like inside.”
Thanks a lot for the reassurance. I feel a lot better now!
.-= Elle Riley´s last blog ..In Life, Attitude is EVERYTHING! =-.
I had to be careful when writing about things like the White House and Washington DC — stuff that if you got it wrong, would undermine the credibility of the whole book. But stuff like the interior of a hot new restaurant or a gymnasium? I fudged.
As a breast cancer survivor, I was astounded at how accurate AWS “got” breast cancer. Had she not been accurate, I would have caught it. In short–accuracy is important, even in fiction.
I think “it depends”. Some things have to be right: like famous sites (the White House, Mount Rushmore). Restaurants and private settings you can fudge. I like to use fictional towns so I don’t have to worry about actual geography.
I have one (yet unpublished) story that I have held back because of a “fudge” that I’m afraid won’t fly. I’d love feedback. The setting of the story is Charleston, SC, during the annual Spoleto Festival. From the research I have done, it seems the Spoleto Festival is run by a non-profit foundation. My story has the Festival run by a tight group of Charleston arts-and-society Insiders, known as “The Committee”. I’d be willing to bet that the actual Foundation that runs the Festival is controlled and run by a tight group of Charleston arts-and-society Insiders.
Part of me thinks that my fudge is okay because the only people who would know it’s a “fudge” are the handful of people who actually know how the Festival is run. Part of me thinks that I am playing too fast and loose with “facts” that should not be fictionalized.
I’m on the fence.
.-= Meredith´s last blog ..On Inspiration, Creativity and Ideas =-.
I enjoyed your post. Excellent points. However, the reason I’m commenting is to praise your wonderful little pic! I’m here looking for an upcoming post and saw the funky little bird being watched by the real one and I had to read it. Adorable.